When Expertise Isn’t the Answer

Christopher J. Colombo MD, CEC, CMC, CPP Introduction Most professions reward expertise and this generally plays as exactly what you’d expect for the profession to be effective. Patients deserve physicians who recognize subtle diagnoses. Aircraft deserve engineers who understand failure modes. Organizations benefit when accountants know the subtleties of tax law, software developers understand minute...

The Second Apprenticeship

Christopher J. Colombo MD, CEC, CMC, CPP Introduction Organizations love promoting experts. It makes intuitive sense. The engineer who designed the breakthrough product becomes the engineering manager. The scientist who built the most successful laboratory becomes department chair. The professor with the strongest research portfolio becomes dean. The physician with the broadest clinical, educational, and...

Psychological Richness Part 2: Biases, Blind Spots, and the Postmodern Trap

Christopher J. Colombo MD, CEC, CMC, CPP Introduction When we left off, we’d mapped out the three dimensions of a good life—happiness, meaning, and psychological richness—and how each complements the others. Happiness comforts. Meaning guides. Richness changes. But now it’s time to ask a harder question: what happens when we turn the microscope back on the model itself?...

Psychological Richness Part 1 – Defining the Good Life: Happiness, Meaning, and Richness

Christopher J. Colombo MD, CEC, CMC, CPP Introduction I’d like you to consider a deceptively simple question: what makes a life good? This isn’t a new question. Plato warned that an unexamined life wasn’t worth living. Aristotle proposed that the good life was one of virtue and purpose. The Epicureans, by contrast, believed happiness came from...